With the advent of converged networks, there is a growing demand for customers to access media i.e. images, audio, video via different electronic devices such as Personal Computer (PC), laptop, mobile device, Television (TV) Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) etc. For example, today customers have a requirement to access media applications such as video on demand application via PC in the office, IPTV at home and mobile device during transit. The different devices may support different formats for facilitating rendering of the received media. Accordingly, prior to rendering the media on the different devices i.e. PC, IPTV and mobile device, the media requires transformation from one encoding format to other encoding formats which the different devices support. This technique of transforming media data from one encoding format to another encoding format is referred to as transcoding.
Convergence of networks and increase in access to digital media using different devices has in turn facilitated unauthorized copying and distribution of the digital media. Currently, digital watermarking is adopted for protecting the digital media content by inserting copyright information in the media content. Watermark is a visible or an invisible digital pattern which is inserted into digital media and the watermark facilitates identifying copyright owner of the digital media. For example, in case of video content, watermark pattern is embedded into original video content in spatial domain which includes embedding identical or non-identical watermarks in frames of the video content. Watermark pattern may also be embedded into original video content in frequency domain i.e. in Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) bands, using techniques of multi-resolution signal decomposing, using Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), using Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), and using DCT based perceptual watermarking methods.
However, the watermark pattern inserted in the media content may get distorted when the media content is transcoded according to the device on which media is to be rendered. This is so, as during transcoding process there are various stages such as scaling, compression, translation and interleaving of media content takes place which may unintentially distort or remove the inserted watermark. This in turn may cause difficulty in proving the copyright ownership. To overcome this drawback, conventionally, watermark is inserted into the digital media after transcoding is performed for each device on which media is to be rendered. That is, the same media content is watermarked separately after transcoding is performed for each of the devices. This results in redundancy and increase in processing overhead as well as computational complexity and cost. There is, therefore, a need for a system and method for performing watermarking in a manner that minimizes the effects of transcoding on the watermark pattern.
In light of the abovementioned drawbacks, there is a need of a method and system which facilitates inserting watermark in the original media content before transcoding such that the watermark is not distorted when the media content is transcoded for different devices. Further, there is a need for a system and method that facilitates enhancing data security across various formats of media content. In addition, there is a need for a system and method that facilitates adaptive content providers to provide a robust watermarking technique that facilitates secure media delivery with lower computational cost and complexity.